Kings County, New York District Attorney Joe Hynes put out a statement just now:
Well, what a stunner. Still no retraction from you, New York Times? Will you even bother to report this news this time, after failing to report thatformer MA Attorney General Scott Harshbarger found the same [PDF] months ago, as did the Congressional Research Service, even as you continued mis-reporting the ACORN “pimp” hoax ever since?
UPDATE: This new post from the NY Daily News seems to indicate the D.A. was able to look at the complete unedited video which Breitbart and O’Keefe have otherwise refused to release publicly (see our Exclusive Video of Breitbart discussing this from earlier today) and found, according to “a law enforcement source”, as we’ve long argued: “They edited the tape to meet their agenda”!…
While the video by James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles seemed to show three ACORN workers advising a prostitute how to hide ill-gotten gains, the unedited version was not as clear, according to a law enforcement source.
“They edited the tape to meet their agenda,” said the source.
UPDATE 3:24PM ACORN issues a statement following the announcement from the King County, D.A. noting what The BRAD BLOG has been reporting for years:
Observers who looked closely at the filmmakers’ own transcripts have already noted that O’Keefe presented low level employees with a bogus scenario in which he presented himself as a boyfriend trying to rescue a prostitute from a violent pimp. Although no employees took any actual action to file papers for loans or taxes, ACORN already conducted its own review in order to move forward serving our communities.
Hopefully today’s announcement, and similar results from independent reviews, will make politicians and media examine the facts more carefully the next time a valuable community organization is attacked.
Their full statement follows below…
For Immediate Release: March 1, 2010
Contact: Kevin Whelan
Brooklyn DA clears employees portrayed in video scam
On March 1, 2010 The New York Daily News reported that:
Brooklyn prosecutors on Monday cleared ACORN of criminal wrongdoing after a four-month probe that began when undercover conservative activists filmed workers giving what appeared to be illegal advice on how to hide money.
While the video by James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles seemed to show three ACORN workers advising a prostitute how to hide ill-gotten gains, the unedited version was not as clear, according to a law enforcement source.
“They edited the tape to meet their agenda,” said the source.
“On Sept. 15, 2009, my office began an investigation into possible criminality on the part of three ACORN employees,” Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes said in a one-paragraph statement issued Monday afternoon. “That investigation is now concluded and no criminality has been found.”
ACORN spokesman Kevin Whelan issued the following statement on Monday:
O’Keefe and the Fox attack machine targeted ACORN because of our successful work to empower hundreds of thousands of low and moderate families as voters and active citizens.
Observers who looked closely at the filmmakers’ own transcripts have already noted that O’Keefe presented low level employees with a bogus scenario in which he presented himself as a boyfriend trying to rescue a prostitute from a violent pimp. Although no employees took any actual action to file papers for loans or taxes, ACORN already conducted its own review in order to move forward serving our communities.
Hopefully today’s announcement, and similar results from independent reviews, will make politicians and media examine the facts more carefully the next time a valuable community organization is attacked.
Further background: O’Keefe (who, at the time of the incident, was wearing normal clothes and not the outrageous costumed later edited into his films) was later arrested after an attempt to tamper with phone lines at Democratic U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office in New Orleans. He and his sponsors have declined to release the unedited video tapes to the public or other investigators.
ACORN, an anti-poverty group, came under attack from Republicans after it helped millions of mostly minority and low-income citizens apply to register to vote. In recent years ACORN has helped families prepare 150,000 free tax returns and obtain $190 million in tax refunds in the last five years and worked for decades to promote neighborhood safety and homeownership.
UPDATE 3/4/10: Even Rupert Murdoch’s NYPost covers the scam (in three grafs total, but still…):
The video that unleashed a firestorm of criticism on the activist group ACORN was a “heavily edited” splice job that only made it appear as though the organization’s workers were advising a pimp and prostitute on how to get a mortgage, sources said yesterday.
The findings by the Brooklyn DA, following a 5½-month probe into the video, secretly recorded by conservative provocateurs James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, means that no charges will be filed.
Many of the seemingly crime-encouraging answers were taken out of context so as to appear more sinister, sources said.
Breitbart-O’Keefe—-pwnd!
ACORN does nothing criminal after getting “set up” by partisan right-wingers and gets defunded by congress. Dick Cheney admits to committing war crimes on national TV and laughs all the way to the bank. Way to go, Democrats.
Dems are letting John Yoo, Jay Bybee, and the prosecutorial malfeasance in the Siegelman case slip by. They do NOTHING while U.S. CITIZENS are being convicted for clearly bogus reasons (that MIT grad/mother of three, and some person who was merely ACCUSED of thinking ‘terrorist’ thoughts). We are in BIG TROUBLE, folks. It’s so much more than just ACORN. The guns are aimed our way, and pretty soon, those of us who are speaking up are gonna get our butts handed to us. Where are the lawyers?! (Not you, Mr. Canning!)
Nothing to see here move along. Nothing in the media today about this. racist and shameful. Teabagger news is important and must be covered all day everyday. Vice President Biden and Speaker Nancy Pelosi should come out and apologize for the Senate and House votes to defund acorn. I am holding my breath.
We now want all the Democrats and Republicans who gave those speeches for the bill to defund ACORN to apologize! Not just the NYTimes!
So, it turns out a bunch of rich Republican white guys wanted to take down an organization for registering one million mostly blacks who don’t vote Republican by setting them up in the media with an edited doctored video and misleading everyone into thinking he was dressed as an outrageous pimp to make them look bad and stupid. SHOCKING! Almost as shocking as the Bush administration using the DOJ to do the same thing plus bring vote fraud charges against opponents right before elections. Please don’t tell me they also did that! Oh, yeah, they did! I forgot!
Here’s congressmen “pimping” the Defund ACORN Act…WE WANT IT REPEALED AND WE WANT AN APOLOGY:
Inglis: Must Be Vigilant to Defund ACORN
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bawX15b1Fl0
Boehner: Stop All Federal Funding of ACORN
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3cpw1h2aAE
Rep. Bilirakis: Stop Taxpayer Funding of ACORN
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnzXrLPq-as
Rep. Steve King: Defund ACORN
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb5nU0JON3A
McHenry on House vote to defund ACORN
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGtYvHXOoCI
Fat Fuck hypocrite Barney Frank, where’s your apology???
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYr5czLmatk
Most of you people think that because there was no criminality, that ACORN deserves to continue to receive federal funding?! Their behavior was clearly unethical and inappropriate, even if they broke no criminal law.
Hank @ u said: “Their behavior was clearly unethical and inappropriate”
Who’s “they”,
HowardHank?Hank, unethical is a good way to describe doctoring videos to the extent that Congress votes to defund an organization working to help the less fortunate. In fact O’keefe did break some criminal laws.
As has Blackwater, Northrup-Gruman, the CIA, and many many others that continue to gorge at the public teat. You cool with that, Hank? Of course you are, scum.
It really is time to compensate for the mainstream media’s cowardly inability to broadcast facts when it goes against their neo-con agenda. Let’s even this issue out before they put a stranglehold on the Internet. Those neo-cons truly hate America, don’t they?
So Hank, whats your take on Blackwater hiring prostitutes and murdering Iraqi Civilians?
Or, Haliburton Electrocuting American Soldiers?
So, umm… Where’s Breitbart’s response to the NYDN story?
I having trouble finding the response.
Is there some kind of professional wrestling channel on which I can view the Breitbart responses in real time?
Hank,
Let’s see you find Ivy League MBA’s who will work for near minimum wage helping people at the bottom of the economic ladder! Then and only then can you apply your value system and expectations of perfect & perceptive performance to their work.
I think the facts bear out that a majority of ACORN employees acted appropriately and only one or two were not paying enough attention to actually “get” what O’Keefe was planning.
I suspect a majority of large American companies could be made to look the fool if similar tactics were used against them.
bare not bear – it too early for spelling!
So the pimposters lied. What a surprise!
I still think ACORN and its individual employees would have a hell of a case if they would just sue The New York Times for libel, and sue individuals like Clark Hoyt for having contributed to the disappearance of their jobs for no good reason. I really hope they do. I think what the Times has done and is doing is criminal — open and shut.
Mitch: how about suing congress, can you do that? For the Defund Acorn Act? Where’s Barney Franks’ apology?
Brad so much for Clark Hoyt saying that he would tell his writers not to refer to Okeefe as posing as a pimp inside offices.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/...n/02acorn.html
“The Acorn employees in Brooklyn who were captured on a hidden camera seeming to offer conservative activists posing as a pimp and a prostitute creative advice on how to get a mortgage have been cleared of wrongdoing by the Brooklyn district attorney’s office.”
… Bob Ross said on 3/2/2010 @ 10:47 am PT…
Brad so much for Clark Hoyt…
“The Acorn employees in Brooklyn who were captured…posing as a pimp and a prostitute…”
The NYTimes is just plain lying now. The only appropriate course of action is for them to just fold and go away. They no longer serve a purpose.
If this is the best that the NYT can do…I’ll gladly continue to do without them.
SOOOOO glad I cancelled my subscription four years ago.
@#10 Adam Fulford
It would appear that they hate anyone else’s vision or version of what America is-or should be.
They get high on hate. They become addicted to their own adrenaline rush off it.
Consider Fox and the NYT as the neighborhood pushers .
All the hate that’s fit to print,on every street corner.
And, now you know what they mean by daily Fox fix.
Seems like ACORN is owed a lot of apologies.
Shame O’Keefe’s claim wasn’t checked before ACORN was smeared the way they were. But I guess the rule in the “liberal” media nowadays is to shoot a story out there and ask questions much much much later.
O’Keefe did pose as a pimp. He did not DRESS as one.
Hoyt said he would caution reporters not to say O’Keefe DRESSED as a pimp.
Friedman has managed to convince you that the two are the same. They are not.
Here are just a few excerpts showing O’Keefe posing as Giles’s boyfriend, working to rescue her from an abusive pimp — and to set her up in a house where she and underage girls could turn tricks and give him the money to fund his Congressional campaign.
We’ll start with the Baltimore transcript — which is the first ACORN video, and therefore the one where Eric Boehlert denies that O’Keefe pretended to be a pimp. Among other things, we see this:
and this:
and
Similarly, at ACORN D.C., O’Keefe and Giles talk about setting up a house for Giles and several El Salvadorian girls who will be working for him. Giles says she will take the money and give it to O’Keefe, who says he is running for a local election. The ACORN worker tells O’Keefe to distance himself from the house of women of the night that Giles will be running because he is in political stuff and the revelation will be bad for him if people learn about the house of prostitution. Here are some quotes from the transcript which (like all ACORN transcripts) is supported by unedited audio:
San Bernardino:
New York?
My favorite part:
The videos go on and on like that.
Patrick a pimp goes out and gets clients for a woman and collects money. Where in your quotes does he say he is going to do this? It sounds like now you’re trying to change the definition of a pimp to fit your agenda.
Also I’m wondering why you aren’t launching charges as the Deputy DA for him breaking the California penal code 632. California state law requires 2 party consent for recording of conversations.
I could cherry pick from transcripts that don’t match the video tapes as well Patrick. In baltimore he said that she would not be living with him. But then again one of O’Keefe’s former colleagues said he wanted her to edit the script during the planned parenthood investigation to make a nurse look really bad.
By the way, this entire episode took place in ACORN Housing which is a separate entity that ACORN contracts with. It is not a subsidiary or division of ACORN.
A detail the MSM continues to ignore.
Hank @7 wrote:
Most of you people think that because there was no criminality, that ACORN deserves to continue to receive federal funding?! Their behavior was clearly unethical and inappropriate, even if they broke no criminal law.
___________________________
My apologies for re-posting Brad, but I think it necessary to repeat this on various threads so that the easily misled can come to see the gaping hole in their logic.
First they invent allegations of ACORN “voter fraud” and as revealed by the Congressional Research Service, 46 federal, state and local investigations of ACORN produced not a single instance in which someone actually cast a fraudulent vote as a result of an ACORN registration — Not one!
Now, they come up with this bogus sting, not because it in any way proves that ACORN is engaged in “unethical and inappropriate behavior,” as poor, under-informed Hank has been led to believe, but because the GOP does not want the poor and minorities to be lawfully registered to vote. Why? Simple, the GOP does not represent their interests.
(This, by no means, suggests that the corporate sector of the Democratic Party truly represents their interests either, but the fact is that the GOP targets minorities and the poor whose vote they hope to suppress. And that is what this is all about.)